AR in the City – it’s almost built!

By Louise Egan April 9, 2014
Uncategorized

You may recall back in November we introduced an exciting collaborative project called – AR in the City. Well, things are moving along nicely, and our city is becoming populated with relevant facts, data and more.

A collaborative team, consisting of AR expertise at Mimas and a number of key people across the sector has come together to create an AR Sociology experience. Come with us on a tour and understand more about different areas of the city including the social aspects of three different topics: Housing, Crime and Family. Discover some surprising facts about the city based on a London landscape, and compare and contrast data. This is aimed at sociology students, but could be used more widely for both A level students and first year undergraduates.

Who’s involved?

• Matt Ramirez – Lead AR Developer (Mimas)
• Helen Jones – Higher Education Academy (HEA) and British Society of Criminology (BSC LTN)
• Judith Mudd – Chief Executive, The British Sociological Association (BSA)
• Dr Martyn Chamberlain – Senior Lecturer in Criminology and Social Policy, Loughborough University
• John MacInnes – ESRC Strategic Advisor on Quantitative Methods Training
• James Nicholson – Consultant to the SMART Centre, Durham University

Project Expectations

The AR experience will begin with a trigger image of recognizable image of a London Landscape (see below), which will coax the user to delve deeper into different areas.

There will be three key areas: Family, Housing and Crime, which will ‘reveal’ three fictitious selectable areas of London – an affluent area, impoverish area and a commercial area. A dashboard will be displayed that will allow the user to select various related quantitative data; such as the number of people, households, ethnicity, types, and crime rates etc. Each area will allow the user to drill down further to obtain further data.

Alongside the AR experience will be a teaching support pack, which will include the key teaching & learning activities, such as videos; did you know facts; can you find questions; supporting documentation and relevant links, including the Smart Plotter.

The experience will also cover a 60-year time frame, to coincide with the BSA’s 60th birthday.

Benefits for your students

Imagine your students accessing this rich information not on a computer or laptop but on their phones or iPads, in a seminar room with you, or out in the field, engaged in self-directed learning. This is a step-change away from flat websites, but to situated learning, and increasing the student engagement. This type of learning also promotes social learning in a group environment, which you cannot achieve using websites. The simple fact that this learning activity can be achieved individually, in a group or on the move, makes this an exciting project, with further scope for development for a broad array of subjects.

So, if you are a Sociology or Criminology educator you have the chance to be amongst the first to engage with a new teaching tool which will examine social inclusion and exclusion like never before.

AR in the city will be free to use and should be available in the autumn term 2014.

Want to know more?

Colleagues within the team have produced a superb article for Network: Magazine of the British Sociological Association. Helen and Judith discuss more about what AR can do for students and teachers, with further background to the project.

We will be posting more on the final outputs in due course.

Posted on behalf of Andrew Gray: Curator of Herpetology at Manchester Museum

At the moment Adam and I are working on providing information to Gail Millin-Chalabi at Mimas to support a superb new project which is currently underway called ‘Mapping the Museum’. It aims to enhance collections through the use of Augmented Reality (AR) and 3D mapping visualisation. The first phase of the project is focusing on amphibian and reptile species found in the Vivarium and there will be 2 new applications developed.

The first will be called ‘Virtual Vivarium’ – Developed using Google Earth the Virtual Vivarium is the app any visitor will be able use to find out more about the amphibians that are currently both on display and behind the scenes. The Virtual Vivarium will provide exciting new content on:

Where in the world all the amphibian species in the vivarium are located – it visualises the most up-to-date distribution maps from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and our expertise here using the 3D Google Earth globe.
Detailed species descriptions including photographs, videos and relevant links.
All the in-situ costa rican conservation work we are involved in.

Issues surrounding the threats amphibians are facing, using a case study of Madagascar which shows how their habitat has changed over time due to deforestation using satellite image animation

Virtual Vivarium developed using Google Earth

Fabulous Frogs App: Splendid & Native Developed using Junaio the Fabulous Frogs App: Splendid and Native is an interactive Augmented Reality (AR) tool which is targeted at 7 – 11 years and maps to Key Stage 2 of the National Curriculum in England and to the “responsible citizens” and “successful learners” capacities of the Scottish Curriculum for Excellence: specifically the AR app helps to develop children’s capabilities to evaluate environmental issues and to use technology for learning independently. The app will include the following learning objectives and features based around the Splendid Leaf Frog:

Where the Splendid Leaf Frog lives in relation to the learner
Understanding the anatomy of frogs (see below).
Frog life cycle – comparison between the Splendid Leaf Frog and the native Common Frog, including quick quiz questions for each stage of the life cycle
Viewing our Splendid Leaf Frogs with David Attenborough
In-depth exploration of related Frog Blog Manchester content
How you can help – Sponsor a Frog

Fabulous Frogs App: Splendid & Native

Both these 2 exciting new apps are planned for release this summer and will be accessed exclusively through taking a photo of a Splendid Leaf Frog on Frog Blog Manchester with your phone or iPad.

A new medical school collaboration

By Louise Egan March 13, 2014
Uncategorized

Augmented Reality has the potential to enhance the clinical skills development for a range of healthcare professional students medical, pharmacy, nursing and dentistry students who need to be able to demonstrate competency as part of their clinical and practical assessments. Building on our experiences with the Prescribing Skills ibooks and drawing upon new expertise within the team we are currently working collaboratively with medics and pharmacists to develop AR resources that reinforce practical skills development for OSCEs.

Using 3D object recognition on iPads, users can access overlaid virtual imagery, supporting media and textual instructions shadowing them through practical clinical procedures. Additionally, students will be able to interact with AR ready posters around the clinical skills labs enabling linking to video demonstrations and formatting testing of individual learning may be achieved via associated quizzes.

AR horizon scanning and Big Data

By mramirez March 3, 2014
MimasAR, mobile research, Uncategorized
Augmented Reality, benefits, geo-spatial, geospatial, landmap, medicine, Mimas, student experience, technical specifications, user research, wearable devices

Augmented Reality has established itself over the last few years as an emerging technology without appearing to generate enough momentum to galvanise mainstream adoption, that is until now. I predict this will rapidly change as “Big Data” becomes increasingly prevalent and easy to integrate with developing technologies and hardware. If we look at the themes emerging from CES 2014 and most recently the MWC, many of the commercial big hitters are focusing on the use of mobile devices to serve consumers with a plethora of data to assist in their daily lives. This is important where AR is concerned in terms of the use of environmental aware applications monitoring user location, to present relevant contextual information. Obviously, privacy is a major inhibitor to uptake with users reluctant to allow companies like Google access to personal information. Even so, I believe education applications can exploit the potential of a marriage between AR and big data.

The healthcare industry is starting to see integration between wearable devices coupled with patient data/imaging to identify precision placement when applying an IV in the example above from Evena. This could have a massive impact in the training of medical students and continued development of existing medical professionals. The automotive industry are also providing manual data to owners enabling them to perform simple maintenance procedures such as topping up windscreen fluid and oil (see below).

Using AR to top up washer fluid in Mini One

With an increasing number of sensors being incorporated into nomadic devices, imagine being able to monitor the air quality at different points in a city for an environmental tour, then compare it in real time with city averages across the globe to draw out correlations and causality.

Core Geology Sample

As part of an AR Geology field trip Mimas developed last year, users could listen to qualified academic commentary, uncover fossils and navigate a predefined route. Going beyond this, I envisage it will soon be possible to use big data to serve soil information and accurate core samples based on their exact location. Couple this with increased range of device sensors and students could record pH readings for project work, adding them to datasets for analysis, enabling the prediction of future environmental impact. This data could then be shared with the Environmental Agency so that preventative measures could be taken prior to any serious ecological impact.

Of course, there are a few obstacles to overcome before users are able to realise the potential application of environmental aware content in an education context. Battery life is a major problem yet to be resolved, and will need to be addressed before other sensors can be reliably integrated to ubiquitous devices. Also, hardware capabilities, although improving exponentially, will at present prevent some of the more engaging and practical uses of AR, especially dynamic 3D modelling. Wearable devices are still in their infancy and user experiences are patchy at best, social acceptance is another issue to overcome, merely putting frames around the technology (http://www.google.com/glass/start/) will not stop users looking like a cyborg and feeling marginalised.

Viktoe Mayer-Schonberger and Kenneth Cukier talk about the value of “data reuse” in their book Big Data; how data can have multiple uses to extend value beyond its original purpose. Consider an engineering student being able to use an AR resource to overlay BIM information (electrical circuitry, air conditioning layout, floorplan) as 3D models on a site visit to quality assure the construction of utilities. Fast forward a few years to a fire fighter wading through the same smoke filled room using the same data to navigate around the building and find the nearest water supply via an AR HUD in their protective visor. It sounds like the stuff of science fiction but it is closer than you think. This is also a great illustration of how educational research could be applied to positively affect a critical part of our lives in the emergency services.

Although I do not pretend to come from a position of neutrality where AR is concerned, I honestly believe that as big data becomes more available and consumable by mobile/wearable devices, its relationship with AR can help move towards a critical mass in education and beyond. Users will come to view this new synergy as a natural way to consume information, instead of an unwieldy technology shoehorned into their everyday lives.

Handing over the display cases features in CILIP Update

By Louise Egan February 27, 2014
MimasAR, Student Experience, Uncategorized
pedagogy

We are delighted that one of our AR projects has featured in the latest edition of CILIP Update.

The article – Handing over the display cases (CILIP Update, January 2014, p 35) brings to the fore how the team working with the John Rylands Library at the University of Manchester, brought about the opportunity for schools students to act as curators.

We originally blogged about the project last September (Bringing display cases to life), and we are thrilled at how the project continues to develop.

Early user feedback has been very positive with one user enthusing that the app was an ‘amazing idea, I had a lot of fun and learnt a lot as well.’

We hope you enjoy the full article, and watch this space for more updates.

Mapping the Museum – A new collaborative AR project (#MappingtheMuseum)

By gmchalabi February 4, 2014
MimasAR, Museums, Project overview
Augmented Reality, geo-spatial, geospatial, Mapping, Mimas, Vivarium

I would like to introduce an exciting new project which is underway called ‘Mapping the Museum’. The initial idea for the project came to my mind just before Christmas and since then I have been brainstorming the different directions or ‘phases’ the project could take. My interest is to incorporate the geospatial context behind museum collections by using satellite images and maps.

Initial project phases

Mapping the Museum is based at Manchester Museum which aims to enhance collections through the use of Augmented Reality (AR) and 3D mapping visualisation.

The first phase of the project will use Google Earth and AR to visualise the spatial distribution of amphibians and reptiles found in the Vivarium collection, including those species behind the scenes. In addition learning outcomes of the Vivarium exhibit will be illustrated through the use of satellite images to highlight environmental issues such as deforestation and climate change.

Leaf frog behind the scenes of the Vivarium, Manchester Museum – Taken by Matt Ramirez

The second phase will focus on extending the Ancient Worlds App by using AR to annotate artifacts and objects found in the Egyptology exhibit and add a geospatial dimension through providing maps (where appropriate) of where the artifact/object was originally discovered.

Project aim

The aim of the project is to reinforce learning outcomes of museum collections by using interactive technologies both in situ and remotely which can draw together a wide range of multimedia content related to the object of interest and provide a geospatial context to collections.

Who’s involved?

– Gail Millin-Chalabi – Project Manager/ Geodata R&D Officer (Mimas)

– Matt Ramirez – AR Programme Manager & Developer (Mimas)

– Adam Bland – Vivarium Assistant (Manchester Museum)

– Andrew Gray – Curator of Herpetology (Manchester Museum)

– Stephen Devine – New Media Officer (Manchester Museum)

What happens next?

The next few months will be busy with the Vivarium staff providing the required content e.g. photographs of frog species, frog descriptions and spatial distributions.

Matt and I will be storyboarding the app/ visualisation tools during the next couple of weeks, identifying potential AR triggers in the Vivarium exhibit.

Stephen will be assisting with content requirements for the Ancient Worlds exhibits. We will keep you posted of project updates via the blog and Twitter, using the tag #MappingtheMuseum.

To find out more about the Vivarium please visit the Frog Blog.

Geospatial AR

By gmchalabi January 20, 2014
Content Development, MimasAR, Museums
geo-spatial

New Team Member

I am Gail Millin-Chalabi, Geodata Research & Development Officer (Museum AR & Visualisation). I have joined the Learning and Teaching Team with the aim to develop a showcase of AR examples for the Museum sector. I will be seeking engagement opportunities with Museum curators to develop new AR apps with the aim to enhance interaction and learning of Museum collections and where appropriate add a geospatial flare.

What is AR?

AR is a live, copy, view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented (or supplemented) by computer-generated sensory input such as sound, graphics or Global Positioning System (GPS) data (Wikipedia, 2014).

Or put even more succinctly:

AR simply enhances the reality around you (Douglas, 2013).

Googling Geospatial AR

I am quite new to AR. My previous experience is working with Matt Ramirez on the UKMap App which was released last year. As my interest is in geospatial data I decided to see what was already out there in this area of AR.

When Googling ‘Geospatial AR’ the first result is a Geospatial AR Twitter this has been set-up by Directions Magazine [1] which is a news magazine covering Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and geospatial technology. I thought it would be a good idea to ‘Follow’ this Twitter feed for any useful updates and developments.

The second result is Geospatial Augmented Reality LinkedIn, certainly the social networking applications take the top spots on a Google search! This is a subgroup of Location Intelligence and Analytics and membership needs to be requested. I have a LinkedIn account so thought I would join up and see what I could find out (that made me the 429^th member of this group). When scanning through the discussions area of the group one discussion really stood out to me from Richard Miller President at LEGIS CORPORATION it is titled ‘Has Geospatial Augmented Reality hit the creative wall?’ Controversial! Only two people liked this comment and well there were no follow-up comments either. Richard was arguing the point that AR is not really offering up anything new in the geospatial industry and that after viewing a 3D terrain ultimately the user is back to using hyperlinks. ‘A lack of vision’ was stated as the reason for uninspiring geospatial AR apps.

Normally when you want to know the basics a good book is an excellent starting point. I wondered what books have specifically been written on geospatial AR. I found the following:

Schall, G. (2013) Mobile Augmented Reality for Human Scale Interation with Geospatial Models: The Benefit for Industrial Applications. Springer Gabler. (Available)

Thierry, B. and Sylvie, D. (Eds.) (2010) Mobile Geospatial Augmented Reality: Proceedings of the 2^nd International Workshop in Mobile Geospatial Augmented Reality (Lecture Notes in GeoInformation and Cartography). (Currently not available)

Real-world examples

As there is not a great deal of books to choose from I decided to do a search for journal articles in the Web of Knowledge database using the Search terms geospatial and Augmented Reality. This was a much more fruitful exercise for finding specific examples of how geospatial AR has been applied to real world problems e.g.

Schall, G., Zollmann, S. and Reitmayr, G. (2013) ‘Smart Vidente: advance in mobile augmented reality for interactive visualization of underground infrastructure’, Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 17(7), 1533-1549.

Choi, J., Jang, B. and Kim, G.J. (2011) ‘Organizing and presenting geospatial tags in location-based augmented reality’, Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 15(6), 641-647.

Steinicke, F., Mensmann, J., Hinrichs, K., Rothaus, K., de Buhe, J. and Kruger, A. (2008) ‘Augmenting 3D city models with visualization of real-time meteorological phenomena’, GRAPP 2008: Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Computer Graphics Theory and Applications. 359-366.

I was surprised how long AR has been used, it is not exactly a new technology and has been applied in the engineering and marketing sectors but seems to have been under-utilized in teaching and learning of geospatial subject areas such as Geography and Environmental Sciences. Now that GIS is formally in the curriculum for Key Stage 3 through to A Level Geography pupils[2] I wonder if an AR app could help in teaching initial GIS concepts such as mapping layers and basic geoprocessing operations such as intersect, buffering and union between geographic layers. This would remove the requirement for complex GIS software to be installed for those at the introductory level and therefore ease the learner into GIS technology.

Top AR apps for 2013

I wanted to interact with some real life examples of AR which I could download straightaway on my phone. I have a Samsung S3 so need apps which are designed for Android. I found a great article by Nick Douglas called ‘Top 10 Augmented Reality Apps for Android’[3] where he listed the following:

Google Sky Map
Lookator
Google Goggles
Layar
Wikitude World Browser
Satellite AR
SpecTrek
Augment
AugSatNav
AR Invaders

So far I have tried out the Google Sky Map which worked seamlessly. To find out more about the above apps go to http://www.augmentedrealitytrends.com/ar-app/top-10-augmented-reality-apps-for-android.html .

Summary

My search has certainly identified some resources for me to use to get started in both understanding and hopefully developing my own AR application. I have also managed to obtain some insight into geospatial AR and I am currently developing ideas of how potentially AR technology could be used in a Museum setting.

[1] http://www.directionsmag.com/

[2] http://www.geoconnexion.com/publications/geo-uk/issue/january-february-2014-uk-issue/article/schools-the-final-frontier

[3] http://www.augmentedrealitytrends.com/ar-app/top-10-augmented-reality-apps-for-android.html

An AR Experiment – Engaging students at Bromley College

By Louise Egan January 17, 2014
Student Experience
Barry Spencer, Bromley College, pedagogy, Student

The following blog post has been kindly sent to us from Barry Spencer, Bromley College, who has been working on an AR trial with students.

An AR Experiment

During the summer term 2013, as an opportunity for staff to explore new and emerging technologies and practice emerged, the College launched a series of innovation projects.

Following on from the work already conducted in the use of augmented reality using the Aurasma application, please see ‘ Engaging learners with augmented reality’ at http://jiscrsclondon.wordpress.com/2013/02/28/augmented-reality/ – an Innovation Project application was approved using Augmented Reality.

Overview (description):

The project would be used as a mechanism to inform on the following points of interest:

1: To explore the potential for Augmented Reality to leverage student engagement.

2: The possibility of enriching paper based course materials with voice-overs, animations, videos and images.

3: Investigate the potential of replacing standard A4 course notes.

4: Take advantage of what has become the widespread ownership among students of Smartphone and Tablet Devices in accessing these new materials.

5: The viability of utilising Augmented Reality technology in support of mobile learning from both the perspective of student learning experience and wider network accessibility.

Aims and Objectives:

Aim: To employ the use of augmented reality as part of student materials

Objectives: To both enrich and engage the student learning experience

Project Outline or Methodology:

The project would be used with students currently enrolled on our year 2 BSc Science course unit Metabolism and Disease, lecturer Nyree Myett. The course itself is delivered to forty students divided into two discrete groups. The material selected for the project would be drawn from a five sided A4 hand-out covering Pyruvate Hydrogenase, that will be modified in terms of the project definition to produce an augmented reality version. The completed AR document has been reproduced as a screen shot below, or view a video here at http://cd.bromley.ac.uk/bteccourses/arVideo/bcarscience.mp4

Produced as a double-sided A4 page, in use the handout would be folded in half so effectively becoming A5. With specific reference to digital content the document comprised on a YouTube video, two animations with a voice over and finally a Moodle quiz.

As a means of evaluating the overall effectiveness of the learning experience, each group will complete a chart (please see below), recording their overall sense of competence in the subject area before the lecture, after the lecture and following the use of AR.

Competence	BeforeLectures	AfterLectures	AfterAR
10 (very low)
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1 (very high)

Outcome of the trial:

A prerequisite of the talking part in the project relied upon students owning suitable Smartphone or tablet devices, of the original forty only sixteen had suitable access.

The screen shot of the spreadsheet chart below shows the competence outcomes of the participants 1 (very high) to 10 (very low). An initial visual assessment of the outcome reveals that of the sixteen taking part, four students felt that the inclusion of AR materials had not improved their sense of competence in the subject. However 12 did indicate that the AR had made a measurable impact. Taking the average for improvements only gives a figure of 2.42 (almost 25%).

Conclusion:

This was the first trial of using AR here at the College for a single target group. The results gained from the feedback are certainly encouraging. With regard to the five points outlined in the overview for the project, I feel these have all at least in part proved worthwhile as criteria for inclusion in future augmented reality project work.

———————————————–END————————————————

We thank Barry for his contribution. We are always keen to hear your AR stories. Please contact Louise Egan (louise.egan@manchester.ac.uk) if you have a story to tell.

Exemplary AR Achievement for Team SCARLET

By Louise Egan December 13, 2013
SCARLET+, Uncategorized
Team SCARLET

The SCARLET team from Mimas attended a dazzling award ceremony, held on 28th November in London, hosted by comedian, writer, TV presenter, Sandi Toksvig.

The Mimas-led Team SCARLET project was shortlisted for the Outstanding ICT Initiative of the Year in the Times Higher Education Awards, for their Augmented Reality (AR) initiative – providing innovation to education through the use of mobile technology to bring special collections to life.

Home THE Awards 2013

The awards, now in their ninth year, recognises and celebrates the best of the academic sector in both teaching and research, and is hotly contested. To be shortlisted is an honour and a great achievement.

Dr Jackie Carter said:

We were thrilled to be shortlisted for the THE ICT Outstanding Initiative of the Year award. The SCARLET Team have taken the original idea, of using augmented reality to bring objects to life in university teaching, to new limits. We trialled the approach with early printed books and Greek papyri, firmly embedding this in teaching with pedagogy, not technology, always the driver. The team built on this working with many other groups, within and beyond Manchester, including the Mass Observation project, the University for the Creative Arts, geology field trips in the Peak District, medical equipment and now on a multi-partner project called ‘AR in the City‘. The success of this small team is nothing short of phenomenal.

In the beginning

With the University’s strategic plan to provide an ’outstanding learning and student experience’ in mind; and a spark of imagination and initiative from Mimas’ now lead AR developer, Matt Ramirez – SCARLET was borne. The project provided students the chance to immerse themselves in the fascinating world of rare and fragile objects, using AR to discover supplementary information and unlock once hidden information surrounding the objects . By focusing on teaching, not the technology, the team continues to deliver many new AR projects across many disciplines, which has grown from the initial collaboration and experiences from the original project between Mimas, The John Rylands Library, learning technologists and the academic community at the University of Manchester.

Professor Richard Reece, Associate Vice President, University of Manchester said:

One of the central goals of The University of Manchester’s strategic plan is to ensure access for all students to an outstanding learning and student experience. The augmented reality project initially set out to enable large numbers of students, at any stage of their careers, to interact with and fully appreciate delicate and precious academic materials that would otherwise be locked behind display cases or available to very few. As a ‘proof of concept’ SCARLET has been enormously successful. The rich variety of materials that can be “tagged” onto objects allows students to be able to immerse themselves in the object and its relevance in ways which would have been previously unimaginable. The spread of the technology from the classics to almost all aspects of academic endeavour are clear marker of this success. Feedback from students and staff regarding the project has been outstanding, and the initiative forms a key component of our commitment to provide the best possible environments for learning at The University of Manchester.

3rd-year Advanced Greek students provide an example of positive feedback on the AR app developed for the St John Fragment, the most famous piece of Egyptian papyrus in the library:

It’s better than passing the book around where you can’t spend much time looking at it as you have to give it to someone else.

It can give us the ability to move forward and enhance active learning, helps to approach the content in more depth.

Keith Cole, Director of Mimas, University of Manchester said:

The SCARLET project is an exemplar of what can be achieved by applying new technologies such as augmented reality to support innovative digital learning and to improve the student experience.

One of the real successes of the project was the development of a successful mixed team approach of academics, students, librarians and technologists working together in a synergistic way to develop an application that was in line with student expectations about technology enhanced learning that inspires.

The SCARLET project has enabled Mimas to develop a national reputation for the application of AR to support digitally enhanced learning which is line with the Mimas mission to turn advances in technology into real value for the UK academic community.

Many congratulations to everyone from the university in achieving this accolade. A full list of winners can be found at the THE website, which we are pleased to say includes the University of Manchester who took first place in the category: OUTSTANDING CONTRIBUTION TO THE LOCAL COMMUNITY for ‘The Works’. Tweets from the event can be viewed using #THEawards

Further videos about the SCARLET project, and just some of the latest projects can be seen at: http://teamscarlet.wordpress.com/showcase

Lifting the roof on Social Sciences – A new collaborative AR project (#ARcity)

By Laura Skilton (formerly Shaw) November 26, 2013
Project Managment, Project overview
ARCity, Mimas

Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)
Author: tecmark.co.uk

I’d like to tell you about a new and exciting AR project that the SCARLET team at Mimas have just embarked on named ‘AR in the City’. The initial concept for the project was sparked by our existing AR developments and a meeting of minds at this year’s HEA Social Science conference.

The overall idea is to create one outstanding example of AR to be used within social science education. The aim is to enhance teaching and learning of methods teaching within Sociology and Criminology and embed quantitative methods into the AR and teaching experience. So, building on the successful methodologies of the SCARLET projects, we aim to run an exciting pilot project.

An AR Project Manager’s perspective

If you’ve ever wanted to start an AR project then here is a very simplistic overview of what I would suggest:

The right/mixed team – include academics, people to organise the project and ideally people with AR experience. This will make your project efficient. Here at Mimas we have learnt so much about AR, and whilst we try and share what we learn on this blog, there is nothing like having that experience in a team to avoid mistakes, save time and understand the potential of the technology within teaching and learning.

Get some funding or buy-out some staff time (you’ll need to rely on enthusiasm too but AR projects lend themselves well to this!) – however small you can develop an AR experience for minimal cost, the key is the right people on the team and an idea led by the academics not the technology.

Get everyone (or everyone you can) together – to formulate that idea you’ll need everyone’s heads together and lots of post-its.

Make sure everyone knows what their role is and understands the scope and vision of the project – most of our AR projects have short time scales and everyone is very busy doing their day job, so make sure everyone is clear on their tasks

Timescales – set yourself realistic timescales, and ensure that each team member can commit to the proposed timeline.

We’ve used these key steps on all of our AR projects so far and they have all gone pretty well. Remember, if you need help with an AR project, from a day’s consultancy to full project management and AR development please do contact us. We’re based at the University of Manchester and are experts in developing effective AR experiences for learning and teaching.

Who’s involved?

As well as colleagues from Mimas, we’ve pulled together partners from the Higher Education Academy (HEA), British Society of Criminology Learning and Teaching Network (BSCLTN), British Sociological Association (BSA), Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), Durham and Loughborough University. These include:

– Laura Skilton, Matt Ramirez and Louise Egan from Mimas

– Helen Jones from the HEA and BSCLTN

– Dr Martyn Chamberlain from Loughborough University and the BSCLTN

– John MacInnes, ESRC

– Judith Mudd and David Mellor from the BSA

– James Nicholson, SMART Centre, Durham University

What happens next?

We’ve got an idea for our AR experience that meets a teaching need within Sociology and Criminology. Next, we need to test the idea and start to develop a storyboard. Shortly we’ll write a blog post that encapsulates our AR in the City vision, or the AR experience from the perspectives of the academics and partners. We also need to decide which city to base our pilot on! More news to follow shortly.

We will also be sharing our development via Twitter, using the tag #ARcity.

Thinking about developing your own AR project?

Please do contact us: teamscarlet.wordpress.com/about.